Our identity is important to all of us. And all of our identities are under attack. Routinely, nefarious parties strip mine our online presences to find ways of breaching our walls and counterfeiting our digital selves for their own ends. From a simple joyride to a more sinister bank heist, the modern citizen has much to fear from identity theft. But as much as we have to lose as individuals, our employers have even more at stake. Data-breach dollar-costs can reach the millions, and smaller companies may never recover. According to one report, in 2023 almost a third (32 per cent) of businesses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) endured an identity-fraud attack involving a deepfake video. From the perspective of cybersecurity, the protection of our identities must be given the highest priority.
To fulfil that promise, security teams often focus on accounts that have been granted privileged access to critical areas — systems, data, applications, and others — but IT infrastructure has become much too advanced for this approach to be effective on its own. Some instances of privilege are not etched in stone to be discovered by a simple survey. Some of today’s environments confer access through on-premises privilege models or through roles and entitlements in cloud systems. Privileged Access Management (PAM) platforms, however, are still used by organisations to focus controls almost exclusively on administrative privileges that are directly assigned. But malicious actors rarely start their intrusions at the top. They frequently hijack non-admin user accounts and move laterally, worming their way towards greater and greater privilege.
User groups, misconfigurations, and overlooked cloud permissions — these are all features of the modern IT environment. The sprawling nature of the average tech stack offers more Paths to Privilege than ever but while the Paths are easy to exploit by attackers, they are obscured from the SOC’s view. Traditional PAM is focused on internal visibility and on control of assigned privileges; and the tunnel vision of traditional identity-security tools means they offer little to plug the gaps. And so, we see growing numbers of non-IT users with high privilege levels. They are spread across the environment. They expand the attack surface. They must be addressed.
But how? Managing identity security across a hybrid IT environment that includes multiple domains is difficult when one also has the goal of enhancing productivity. Just as IT environments have changed, PAM must change. This adapted, modern PAM must plug the critical identity security gaps that traditional solutions cannot. Modern PAM must expand visibility, bolster protection measures, and tighten controls beyond those accounts with directly assigned privileges. It needs to provide coverage across on-premises, cloud, SaaS, OT, and more. It must be the ultimate authority over what is accessed by whom or by what.
To frame modern PAM into a broad check sheet, there are four must-haves that will form the foundation of all effective platforms.
A secret-keeper
Modern PAM must be capable of managing any type of secret, from the something-you-knows, like passwords, to the something-you-haves, like keys. The platform must be able to do this in any type of environment — on-premises data centres, remote work locations, and cloud environments, whether they be IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS.
A single-pane solution
Modern PAM should be holistic and allow for all use cases. It should deliver access management; it should deliver session monitoring. And everything should be available to security personnel through a single platform. There should be no need to hop from screen to screen to get a full view of the identity ecosystem.
A best-practice champion
Modern PAM must, of course, embrace the prevailing industry wisdom on identity security. Zero-trust, least-privilege, and just-in-time principles must all be in effect. The region’s regulators must also be respected through advanced compliance reporting. With best practices in place, PAM is a silo no longer, but operates as a fully integrated component of a larger security strategy.
A firm foundation
Modern PAM sits at the heart of modern security suites, helping to redefine identity security and providing a foundation for securing all aspects of the identity and access management fabric.
More nooks, more crannies
PAM has always been preventative and will remain so. Modern PAM looks into more nooks and presses itself into more crannies than its predecessor. It proactively shrinks the attack surface by using the latest tools in its fight against aggressors. Modern PAM’s defining trait is its proactiveness. What better tools to leverage in detecting and mitigating threats than AI- and ML-powered intelligence. Through AI, PAM becomes a core part of identity threat detection and response (ITDR).
Modern PAM is more than a toolbox. It is an enabler of productivity for IT admin, help desks, and end users. Far from being an obstacle to access, it enables faster access for those who need it — fewer authentication steps, less admin workload, and fewer raised tickets — all while creating a hardened, more identity-aware security posture. For example, traditional PAM finds it problematic to deliver just-in-time (JIT) access in cloud environments without the need for high-burden authentication that eats into productivity. Modern PAM is ideal in these scenarios because it is built around streamlined workflows that maintain security and auditability.
Our identities have always been under threat. There is no better way for fraudsters to defraud and thieves to thieve than to wear the skin of their victims. As environments have evolved, criminals have shown an uncanny knack of evolving with them. As potential victims, we too must evolve, and so must the tools of our defense. Modern PAM puts this notion into practice by employing a more intelligent approach to identity and privilege management. It eradicates identity-security blind spots, removes standing privileges, and decomplicates least-privilege. Turbocharged by AI, modern PAM clears the fog in front of the SOC, shines lights into hidden corners, and lays down the law on behalf of business strategists without ever blocking roads to achievement. Modern PAM is the new indispensable ally in our daily cyber-skirmishes.
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